This is a story we've been following for about a year. You might remember Columbia's own Bruce Trezevant and Warren Wilson. As soon as Bruce found out his best friend Warren needed a kidney transplant, he started testing to see if he was a match. They turned out to be a perfect match, but it wasn't as simple as just surgery. Just a warning: if you watch the video, some of the images you'll see in the operating room might be disturbing. But for Bruce and especially Warren, this is a live saving moment they've waited patiently for, but it's their journey that has formed an unbreakable bond. Days before thanksgiving Bruce Trezevant and Warren Wilson have more reasons than one to celebrate; but this moment in time could not have come without some challenges. Warren, born with only one working kidney was in perfect health until a year ago. The printing shop owner was walking in to work.
He went to his doctor thinking it was just a reaction to a new blood pressure medication.
"He did a series of blood tests, I went home and he called and told me to immediately drop what I was doing and go to the ER because my kidney function had gone to zero," Warren said.
Immediately he called his best friend Bruce.
"He told me that he had kidney failure and I
just knew that if there was something I could do, I would. I just told him I'd be willing to be tested for the kidney," Bruce said.Humbled by the offer the tests began.
"I remember the day he gave me the results. I was on dialysis and just started crying and I said man were a perfect match and my faith in God just grew," Warren said.
But i
n a matter of months, Warren's dialysis treatments just weren't enough. He slipped into a coma meanwhile Bruce stopped work on his non-profit to help raise money for the transplant. Bruce was convinced that somehow, someway, his best friend would be by his side again.Six months later, their dream came true.
We started their story a year ago, but Warren believes this day was ordered long before that.
"We met each other at a young age because God lined it up that way," Warren said.Surgeons from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta gave us permission to watch from inside the operating room.
"He's finally getting sleepy, do you know how long it's gonna take?" I asked one of the doctors.
"Anywhere from three to five hours," she responded.
While doctors go to work, family members wait."His daughter, family members; were all supporting him as well as Bruce and were honored that he would do something like this for our brother," Warrens brother Ron Middleton said.
After five hours, finally one of Bruce's kidneys is ready for Warren.
Even though the weren't completely conscience, doctors, nurses, surgeons and more rallied around Bruce and Warren telling them how good they did.
Though doctors performed the procedure, today Bruce and Warren believe a power greater than their own made recovery a possibility.
"We praise you for Lord, it could have gone the other way, but Lord you brought them both out," Warren's pastor said.
Surrounded by faith, friends and one big family, t
his is a Thanksgiving they vow to celebrate always. "Every day is a new day. I feel like a new man. I'm a living miracle. It's amazing how God put his hands on me," Warren said. "Most of the time when we come together as family is after somebody has died but for once we had the joy and nobody died, everybody lived," Bruce said. More than a friendship held together by trust, now Bruce and Warren are brothers bound by love.Right now both men are at home with their loved ones for the holidays.
Both men are entrepreneurs so Warren will be back to WW Printing right here in Columbia by next week and Bruce is picking back up with Project Unity in a few days.
11/26/2008 9:00:11 AM
